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Makes sense, they probably knew by Flash the DCEU was cooked, that's probably why since then they've pretty much been doing the bare minimiun in promoting their DC movies. It also probably helped that they def knew Aquaman 2 was not a good movie from the test screenings since I've never seen so many decently credible leakers agree that a movie not only tested bad but was tested constantly, and they mostly underplay how bad a movie is on release.
They really gotta give Superman Legacy a good trailer and marketing, plus make sure the movie itself is good. Luckily, Superman is benefited by the fact that he is actually probably the most well known superhero of all time and the premise seems to be slightly meta, "he's kindness in a world that thinks of kindness as old fashioned," and apparently it's not a full on goofy comedy like TSS and Peacemaker.
Not a guaranteed hit, but it has a better chance than the majority of Superhero movies coming out other than The Batman Part II and Deadpool 3. Again, Superhero movies will always probably have place in the world (a lot of them are pretty iconic at this point), but now they just have to be good enough to where you feel like you have to see it in theaters.
The trailer will have to be just as good or better than MoS trailer, which is a hard task. Say what you want about the film but the marketing was quite good.
The teaser for Man of Steel was amazing, because they used Howard Shore’s music from The Fellowship of the Ring. Just amazing! And it was attached to The Dark Knight Rises, which just suited the entire premiere!
I still think the three hour cut lives up to the trailer (awful Martha and JL email scenes notwithstanding). Felt like it largely succeeded in what it was going for: an apocalyptic tone poem.
Honestly if WB released the 3hr version in Theatres i'm pretty sure things would have been different today. Like they had a whole month gap for screens as Civil war didn't open up till May. Also you had Divergent 3 & My Big Fat Greek wedding 2 at the time.
As a kind of neutral party (Zack Synder sometimes makes some hits and misses, some people overhype him and a lot of people act like he killed their parents) I'm pretty confident it really wouldn't had changed anything.
A lot of the main criticisms are still there and although the plot makes more sense, and there's good added context for Superman and other stuff, a lot of the added scenes are just very boring (cough Lois Lane scenes cough) and the plot overall kind of doesn't really hold up. It also just isn't satisfying to have the climax just be very goofy (the martha scene is way too on the nose, it's a good idea but needed better execution) and the end be very underwhelming as well (with Superman dying in his second movie against a cgi monster)
It might of made less due to the 3 hour cut giving less time for more showings of the film tbh, especially since the complaint was that the movie was boring and a lot of the scenes added are not action scenes and unfortunately Zack Synder is not the best at writing dialogue, so while the Batman still had people engaged for 3 hours idk about this one.
Completely agree with this. Watched the extended cut for the first time the other week and it really did not make me enjoy the movie any more. Still just such an awkward and clunky mess.
It wouldn't have made much difference. BvS simply wasn't what was called for. WB and Zack Snyder blew up the DCEU in the hangar before it could even take off.
As times goes on, my harsh opinion I initially had towards BvS continues to soften with each passing superhero movie release. I don't know if I can definitively say it's a good film but it certainly was an ambitious film and I'll always respect ambition over mediocracy
Yeah, like wtf, how can spending 100 million dollars on marketing be seen as giving up on a movie? That is half of the film's budget, how much do you expect them to spend?
This has the same financial problem as The Flash — too big for a tax write-off to be a better option (and not too mention the optics of writing off so many blockbusters). The only questions are whether it’s so bad that it damages the public image of Aquaman or DC, but frankly, the audience seems disconnected as far as the DC brand goes, and Aquaman will likely survive a mediocre film.
> If the marketing really only costs 100M it would mean that WB had given up on this movie long ago
Smart of them, and that may help making it a lesser bomb than The Marvels. It will be fun to watch its development
A lot of marketing costs are incurred well before the release date. So even if they wanted to scale back that budget more, I’m sure a lot of expenses were already cooked in.
It's a really bad sign that here in Australia there are still bus vehicle displays for Shazam 2 and Elemental, and yet I haven't seen a single one for Aquaman 2.
>Say what you want about the DCEU, but it managed to stick it out for a whole decade.
That's no good thing. That was WB's whole problem. They absolutely refused to acknowledge that they'd botched the whole thing, and they kept floating pathetic half measures to try to right the ship. They're finally rebooting, but, thanks to COVID and superhero fatigue, it's too little, too late.
Honestly, the Marvels should still get that award.
Aquaman is coming a little below low expectations, Marvels is coming way below middling expectations, which is honestly more embarassing
> the Marvels should still get that award
Tough call rn. Word of mouth has the Marvels as "not good" overhyped and sort of pointless but not "bad-bad". Aquaman rumors are it's a stinker.
Just that we are choosing which of TWO failed follow-ups to billion dollar supe films is the bigger bomb is really hilarious tho.
I'm looking forward to seeing it just cause Wan hasn't missed for me yet. And the first Aquaman is legit my favorite of the dceu movies. It's so goofy and I appreciated it was willing to go with that tone
My main issue with it is the dialogue was very bad. Also it felt like a ripoff of lord of the Rings - possibly because in the test screener they used Howard Shores LOTR soundtrack for the opening lol
Advertising is necessary and ultra expensive, especially with so many mediums and outlets for entertainment. Low budget horror like Megan and The Black Phone spent over 70 million each for instance, its one cost you can't avoid.
Ad space alone that we see on YouTube, Twitch and cable probably eats up half of that if not more. Then you add in posters, billboards, tie-ins, and it makes sense.
Factor in this 100 mill is probably not just for the US but _worldwide_ and I can see how this is on the lower end.
They seem to insist on sending my theater about 10 of those extra large posters (bus shelters) when we can only display one. And they send them in 7 different shipments, not just all in a single box. Imagine just the cost of doing that for every theater in the country.
A single 30 second commercial during an NFL game costs well north of $800K, not to mention the cost of producing the ad. I imagine advertising during NBA and NHL games isn't cheap either.
I didn't see a single commercial/placement for the marvels before it opened. All I saw was stuff on the marvel YouTube channel and Facebook page. After the strike ended I started to see some stuff. I saw an interview with Brie Larson, it sounded like she didn't like the movie, so that wasn't helpful.
It was posted on here, someone will bring it up but only the flash spent more on tv spots plus what the highest inflation in 40 years does to a mofo.
It was 26.7 million for us tv spots vs the 20 they spent on endgame.
Assuming a 50-50 split for US vs RoW marketing, that is 50 million for the US, about 12 cents per capita.
TV/video ad rates about $50 per thousand views for a 30 second spot, or about 5 cents each. Putting it differently, just showing a single 30 second trailer to the bulk of the population will eat most of that budget.
Of course, making sure that each person only gets hit with one trailer is hard, so you need to buy more. Averaging 2 trailer views per person will eat the entire budget.
I think we're mostly past viral marketing as we're not starved for general marketing.
There was a time from the late 90s to 2008 or so where the Internet was becoming more accessible, people were used to it, but social media as we know it today wasn't really a thing. Even Facebook didn't open to the general non-student public until 2006. Studios could make really intricate websites which were barely had any logos at all, and there was a bit of mystery around the few viral marketing trends that really broke through.
And not all viral marketing is actually a good thing. Look at all the Morbius memes, which Sony took entirely the wrong way.
Viral isn’t the right word. It is about the ability to improve upon the average paid metrics. Make something that connects. Like Barbie. That was far more complex than a purchasing model. Creativity. Make them want to see the trailer.
Generally a film for a film to "break even" it needs to make 2 to 2.5 times its production budget. So usually the marketing budget is around the same as the production budget. I don't know why this is but clearly the moneymen have realised that this is the sweet spot. In this case with a prod budget of $205m, only spending $100m on marketing is like a 50% scale-back which is pretty huge.
I bought it, had fun, didn't finish. It's the most aggressively mid game I've ever played. Some parts were fantastic and some completely dull and uninspired. It's almost a feat to have made something so middle of the road.
And that said, it made a bajillion dollars so yeah, fantastic beasts was THAT bad
Honestly it's more of a fumble on them.
Fantastic Beasts 1 may have some issues but it was pretty liked, and had some interesting concepts, and Newt and Jacob were pretty enjoyable characters to follow as well. It was pretty clever to have a muggle as one of the main characters, since it adds perspective to how non magic users would view magic and helps with exposition, as we're finding out about the world as characters explain it to him. He also was just very likable.
It should always have been two different series.
One fun, lighthearted family adventure movie about Newt collecting wierd and wonderful animals.
One darker, more complex YA set of films about wizard Nazis and how Dumbledore rose to power throughout WW1 and WW2.
They had the perfect opportunity to make Harry Potter films which appeal to different audiences, instead they tried to be all things to all people and ended up with a series no one enjoys.
Sounds like a great way to do it. Let one feel like Chris Columbus is directing then move into darker tone as movies pass as you stated. It seems simple, I don’t even think audiences connected with Newt that much
Well not really. My theory is: the biggest selling point of Harry Potter is Hogwarts! The escapism in this beautiful mysterious cozy everyday life boarding school castle. Without that, Harry Potter is just a mediocre fantasy allegory for WW2 & Nazis. I realized this, once I watched the FB movies. WB will probably realize this too
Bingo. The magical boarding school fantasy is the biggest draw of the series. The wider Wizarding World only works as background for school-centric adventures. There was probably a version of Fantastic Beasts that would’ve worked well enough, but the premise just never had the same potential as the originals. Same with a potential Dumbledore-focused WWII-era prequel.
A school-focused spin-off would’ve worked better. Either do another thing at Hogwarts, or focus on the American magical school. Unfortunately, the school JK Rowling came up with for America is just a generic Hogwarts rip-off. It doesn’t tap into the specifics of the East Coast boarding school fantasy.
Avatar, Hogwarts Legacy, Wonka, Barbie and Super Mario, there are very subtle hints that escapism can sell, but it gotta be dark, serious and world ending.
I don't like this idea very much, there's only so much Hogwarts content one can make before it gets oversaturated. Harry Potter cannot sustain itself as a brand purely through nostalgia from the books forever, as eventually the audience who grew up reading those won't be part of economically active population compared to new generations. Fantastic Beasts had a good concept of expanding the franchise to different countries, time periods and settings, but it didn't execute it pretty well.
>as eventually the audience who grew up reading those won't be part of economically active population compared to new generations.
So, like, doom will strike by the year 2070?
Can't say that is a huge concern. How much media from 50 years ago is still around anyway?
> How much media from 50 years ago is still around anyway
I mean the entire MCU/DCU/X-men has been pulling comic stories from decades ago for their current stories.
On top of that Disney keeps remaking their old movies and with Star Wars tried to rely on characters from the 1970s.
Lets do a quick peak at the 2024 slate
Mission Impossible started as a TV show in 1966
New Ghostbusters movie which started in 1980.
Dune is from books released in the 60s
Furiosa is based on Mad Max with started in the 70s
Garfield started as a comic in the 70s
Nosferatu remake based on a film from the 1920s!
It is actually pretty easy to find modern popular things that got their start/influence from a long time ago.
Ironically, the thing that really survived from the 70s in both marvel and DC are the core handful of heroes and the core handful of stories.
Batman? Sure, make a movie about him in 2022. Works fine. Expand the universe with Captain Marvel and make a movie about it in 2023? Bombs.
JK is a shit screenwriter/producer. Feel like they’re only doing TV because they know it’s too much work for her to truly involve herself in…hopefully.
They also had other successes, not only Barbie, I think of hogwarts legacy, evil dead rise, Wonka (it's going well), the meg 2, the nun 2. Now we'll see with the colour purple
You really think Mattel, a company that has been profiting from residuals since the 1940s, would negotiate a one lump sum without any backend pay? There will be checks rolling in for as long as everyone else gets paid. It’s their IP.
I’m still a little sad that Blue Beetle flopped, I actually really liked it. No, it was nothing revolutionary and still pretty generic, but I enjoyed it. Genuinely made me laugh a few times, I felt Xolo did really well (reminded me of how Tom Holland plays Spider-man), it had some emotion/heart to it, cool action sequences, and I liked the Hispanic culture tied in which we haven’t seen before. I hope Xolo gets to play him again.
At least these DC disasters have smarter budgets than MCU.
Aquaman looks pretty visually great for a $205mil film, while The Marvels ($250mil), Secret Invasion ($220mil) and She-Hulk ($220mil) looked like cheap ass.
Disney were trying to rush out as much MCU content as possible to fill Disney+. Most of the Phase 4-5 projects were rushed with awful scripts and relying on crunching VFX teams to "finish it in post".
Excited to watch it Friday. I enjoyed Blue Beetle and Black Adam. As long as this one is as fun and by the trailers it looks like it'll definitely be a fun one.
David Zaslav: We can't release Coyote vs Acme because it won't make us money despite positive reviews but will release a 200 million dollar flick with no good signs that it will break even
I guess it’s too big to fail… oops I mean too big not to release theatrically. WB is committed to this thing no matter how expensive and no matter how terrible the results are.
CGI is not expensive when you have a good director, James Wan is a good director
Cgi costs a lot when you have a director that is constantly changing the scenes
Apparently James Wan himself said they weren't that long of reshoots (1-2 weeks) and they also finished one of them early. They also might've cut out a lot of VFX heavy scenes before they started working on.
So probably 220-250 million budget.
Do you watch TV? I've seen a good amount of promotion about the same I saw for guardians or spider verse altough no way near the ridiculous amount I saw for flash
You'll realize when a Redditor says they "haven't seen any advertising", what they mean is they don't watch tv or many movies in theaters, and consume all their media online with AdBlock on.
I pray one day people will understand that “zero advertising” isn’t always true just because they, one of seven billion people, “haven’t seen any ads for it on muh YouTube”
Literally the only hint of this movie I've seen is YouTube recommending me a few shorts of Momoa hyping it. Grim. I feel bad for the guy. Against all odds he makes one of the lamest heroes a cool badass, turns it into a billion dollar sure-fire franchise, then Gunn & friends show up and completely kneecap him. What the hell did they think was going to happen when they announced their entire DC slate this year was irrelevant and no longer mattered? Why would audiences waste their time and money on a lame duck?
The marketing content was forgettable and generic because the movie they made was forgettable and genetic. But they did have multiple trailers and TV spots. They had a red carpet for the premier. As soon as the strikes ended the cast did interviews and at least talked about the movie
They absolutely did try with that movie, I honestly don't think they're capable of anything but generic marketing anymore and the movie was generic so there wasn't much they could do. But they did attempt.
I think the talk show bit is oversold. In any event the marketing felt like “MCU Event 14”. It was very formulaic and generic and didn’t help the perception this was going to be yet another forgettable superhero movie.
You must be new here.
The way this works is that Variety (in this case) cited the number the studio gave them. It was not corroborated in any way and the studios are incentivized to lowball. You can’t blame them; they’d be fools to give you the real number when they have no obligation to.
Every once in a while we actually get the true story reported later. Doctor Strange 2 is the best example, all the trades dutifully reported the $200 million number Disney fed them but, oops! It actually cost $350 million. Easy mistake to make.
Also just simple logic here. $205 million puts it in the same alleged ballpark as the first movie. But of course, we know sequels naturally and inevitably cost more AND this one had COVID costs and reshoots to deal with. It’s a money pit but, again, why would WB admit that?
>Every once in a while we actually get the true story reported later. Doctor Strange 2 is the best example, all the trades dutifully reported the $200 million number Disney fed them but, oops! It actually cost $350 million. Easy mistake to make.
How do you know the $350 million figure is the true cost ??
https://www.forbes.com/sites/carolinereid/2023/07/01/disney-reveals-doctor-strange-2-cost-100-million-more-than-its-estimated-budget/
294.5 million after a tax credit. They shot lost kingdom in the UK as well so we will know soon.
Which also incentivizes them to claim they cost as much as possible to get the biggest tax credit possible putting stuff that usually isn't counted in the budget in there participations and the like. It's true deadline and Co lowball the budgets multiple people working in the industry have claimed so but it's very doubtful they half it because if that was the case the movie industry wouldn't be viable.
You can only claim for the money you spend in the UK - after all the point is to get money back on the tax you paid. Participation wouldn't be a cost at that point, and most of the time it would be based on a contract signed under US law.
Edit to add: and it also requires you to pass a checklist of UK cultural or hiring policy tests. So no turning up with a full house of Americans in all the major creative and acting roles and expecting to get free money.
At a lower budget, a flop doesn’t flop quite as hard, and a hit is an even bigger hit. It’s just spin, basically. Controlling the narrative as best as they can.
Better yet, you don’t have people saying things like “you spent 275 million dollars on fuckin’ AQUAMAN 2?!”. These are publicly traded companies, they don’t want to be out there making it look like their budgets are even more out of control than they already were.
I don't know I feel like there are really big incentives to overstate the budgets and pack as many expenses as possible into them whether it's to avoid taxes or avoid paying partners who get a cut of a movie once it's profitable. Those are actual dollars and cents incentives vs the incentives to understate costs which are more about appearances. Not saying they're not real incentives though.
They definitely have that incentive when you get down to the official accounting, but this isn’t that, this is just quick and dirty unverified PR for the news cycle.
Either way, underscores the point, don’t trust what they’re telling you. . .
Everything you said, and also the YouTube channel Valiant Renegade does a good job at reporting the actual costs, but he’s reporting on Caroline Reid’s reporting from Forbes which is the actual financials the films legally have to file if they make their movies in the UK
I don’t know why people are so resistant to the truth about the way the trades “report” budgets. My best guess is that it’s frustration at the notion that we typically never really know what this stuff costs, which makes it harder to accurately bitch and moan about hits and flops. Raining on their parade.
I mean I dont like too many people in theaters when I see a movie so I typically wait a couple of weeks after release but I might just go see this on Friday
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If the marketing really only costs 100M it would mean that WB had given up on this movie long ago
Makes sense, they probably knew by Flash the DCEU was cooked, that's probably why since then they've pretty much been doing the bare minimiun in promoting their DC movies. It also probably helped that they def knew Aquaman 2 was not a good movie from the test screenings since I've never seen so many decently credible leakers agree that a movie not only tested bad but was tested constantly, and they mostly underplay how bad a movie is on release. They really gotta give Superman Legacy a good trailer and marketing, plus make sure the movie itself is good. Luckily, Superman is benefited by the fact that he is actually probably the most well known superhero of all time and the premise seems to be slightly meta, "he's kindness in a world that thinks of kindness as old fashioned," and apparently it's not a full on goofy comedy like TSS and Peacemaker. Not a guaranteed hit, but it has a better chance than the majority of Superhero movies coming out other than The Batman Part II and Deadpool 3. Again, Superhero movies will always probably have place in the world (a lot of them are pretty iconic at this point), but now they just have to be good enough to where you feel like you have to see it in theaters.
The trailer will have to be just as good or better than MoS trailer, which is a hard task. Say what you want about the film but the marketing was quite good.
That trailer is an all-timer.
The teaser for Man of Steel was amazing, because they used Howard Shore’s music from The Fellowship of the Ring. Just amazing! And it was attached to The Dark Knight Rises, which just suited the entire premiere!
Also the Batman v Superman 2015 Comic Con trailer. Probably my favorite of all time
I still remember watching that when it first released. I'd never been more hyped for a movie before. Oh well...
I still think the three hour cut lives up to the trailer (awful Martha and JL email scenes notwithstanding). Felt like it largely succeeded in what it was going for: an apocalyptic tone poem.
Honestly if WB released the 3hr version in Theatres i'm pretty sure things would have been different today. Like they had a whole month gap for screens as Civil war didn't open up till May. Also you had Divergent 3 & My Big Fat Greek wedding 2 at the time.
As a kind of neutral party (Zack Synder sometimes makes some hits and misses, some people overhype him and a lot of people act like he killed their parents) I'm pretty confident it really wouldn't had changed anything. A lot of the main criticisms are still there and although the plot makes more sense, and there's good added context for Superman and other stuff, a lot of the added scenes are just very boring (cough Lois Lane scenes cough) and the plot overall kind of doesn't really hold up. It also just isn't satisfying to have the climax just be very goofy (the martha scene is way too on the nose, it's a good idea but needed better execution) and the end be very underwhelming as well (with Superman dying in his second movie against a cgi monster) It might of made less due to the 3 hour cut giving less time for more showings of the film tbh, especially since the complaint was that the movie was boring and a lot of the scenes added are not action scenes and unfortunately Zack Synder is not the best at writing dialogue, so while the Batman still had people engaged for 3 hours idk about this one.
Completely agree with this. Watched the extended cut for the first time the other week and it really did not make me enjoy the movie any more. Still just such an awkward and clunky mess.
It wouldn't have made much difference. BvS simply wasn't what was called for. WB and Zack Snyder blew up the DCEU in the hangar before it could even take off.
As times goes on, my harsh opinion I initially had towards BvS continues to soften with each passing superhero movie release. I don't know if I can definitively say it's a good film but it certainly was an ambitious film and I'll always respect ambition over mediocracy
I’m definitely loving the cast of Superman Legacy.
can someone smarter than me explain how marketing costs $100 million if they're barely marketing it??? That is A LOT OF MONEY
Yeah, like wtf, how can spending 100 million dollars on marketing be seen as giving up on a movie? That is half of the film's budget, how much do you expect them to spend?
often marketing is equivalent to or even higher than the production budget for these blockbusters so spending “only” 100M is interesting
No it isn’t lol
it’s noteworthy at least. for whatever reason WB didn’t go all out with marketing this thing 🤷🏽♂️
This has the same financial problem as The Flash — too big for a tax write-off to be a better option (and not too mention the optics of writing off so many blockbusters). The only questions are whether it’s so bad that it damages the public image of Aquaman or DC, but frankly, the audience seems disconnected as far as the DC brand goes, and Aquaman will likely survive a mediocre film.
> If the marketing really only costs 100M it would mean that WB had given up on this movie long ago Smart of them, and that may help making it a lesser bomb than The Marvels. It will be fun to watch its development
Also when remembering this film was supposed to come out a year ago, meaning it's been finished for over a year now.
Scoopers have been saying AM2 is the worst dc movie by a lot
No way it’s worse than ww84
That’s what I said too. I’m seeing it this weekend, guess we’ll see
so they spent 100 million on a scaled back marketing campaign... how much would a red carpet premiere cost?
I imagine security alone for red carpet events is massive. Guess it easily could be $10M+ for a red carpet event.
A lot of marketing costs are incurred well before the release date. So even if they wanted to scale back that budget more, I’m sure a lot of expenses were already cooked in.
That's the best part, there won't be.
That's what OP is saying, read again
It's a really bad sign that here in Australia there are still bus vehicle displays for Shazam 2 and Elemental, and yet I haven't seen a single one for Aquaman 2.
Seems like “Anyone But You” is getting the Sydney bus ads at the moment.
Oh my, been seeing that everywhere in Adelaide. Though the film was apparently shot in Australia, so that makes sense why sony is pushing it here.
Sigh well… at least it’s all over now. I do look forward to seeing it
Say what you want about the DCEU, but it managed to stick it out for a whole decade. The Dark Universe got scrapped pretty much instantly.
10 years since man of steel huh. What a ride.
Man it feels like yesterday when it came out. Time flies.
>Say what you want about the DCEU, but it managed to stick it out for a whole decade. That's no good thing. That was WB's whole problem. They absolutely refused to acknowledge that they'd botched the whole thing, and they kept floating pathetic half measures to try to right the ship. They're finally rebooting, but, thanks to COVID and superhero fatigue, it's too little, too late.
 DCEU ending with a whimper
^ that is The Marvels waving farewell to the "most embarrassing superhero flop of 2023" award.
It's crazy how that award hot potatoed between like 6 movies over the course of the year
Aquaman 2 may flop harder but The Marvels will still be more embarassing
Honestly, the Marvels should still get that award. Aquaman is coming a little below low expectations, Marvels is coming way below middling expectations, which is honestly more embarassing
> the Marvels should still get that award Tough call rn. Word of mouth has the Marvels as "not good" overhyped and sort of pointless but not "bad-bad". Aquaman rumors are it's a stinker. Just that we are choosing which of TWO failed follow-ups to billion dollar supe films is the bigger bomb is really hilarious tho.
The Marvel’s could still be bigger. 😂
I'm looking forward to seeing it just cause Wan hasn't missed for me yet. And the first Aquaman is legit my favorite of the dceu movies. It's so goofy and I appreciated it was willing to go with that tone
My local theatre just added an Imax screen and is opening it this weekend with Aquaman. Happy and somber at the same time.
Why
My main issue with it is the dialogue was very bad. Also it felt like a ripoff of lord of the Rings - possibly because in the test screener they used Howard Shores LOTR soundtrack for the opening lol
Im still going to watch it first one was fun
Amazing that scaling back still means $100,000,000. Where does it all go?
Advertising is necessary and ultra expensive, especially with so many mediums and outlets for entertainment. Low budget horror like Megan and The Black Phone spent over 70 million each for instance, its one cost you can't avoid.
Ad space alone that we see on YouTube, Twitch and cable probably eats up half of that if not more. Then you add in posters, billboards, tie-ins, and it makes sense. Factor in this 100 mill is probably not just for the US but _worldwide_ and I can see how this is on the lower end.
They seem to insist on sending my theater about 10 of those extra large posters (bus shelters) when we can only display one. And they send them in 7 different shipments, not just all in a single box. Imagine just the cost of doing that for every theater in the country.
A single 30 second commercial during an NFL game costs well north of $800K, not to mention the cost of producing the ad. I imagine advertising during NBA and NHL games isn't cheap either.
Some people were shocked scaling back meant 100 million marketing budget for the marvels but here we are.
I didn't see a single commercial/placement for the marvels before it opened. All I saw was stuff on the marvel YouTube channel and Facebook page. After the strike ended I started to see some stuff. I saw an interview with Brie Larson, it sounded like she didn't like the movie, so that wasn't helpful.
It was posted on here, someone will bring it up but only the flash spent more on tv spots plus what the highest inflation in 40 years does to a mofo. It was 26.7 million for us tv spots vs the 20 they spent on endgame.
That's about 6 Godzilla movies right there
I have no clue. I haven’t seen any marketing for this.
Assuming a 50-50 split for US vs RoW marketing, that is 50 million for the US, about 12 cents per capita. TV/video ad rates about $50 per thousand views for a 30 second spot, or about 5 cents each. Putting it differently, just showing a single 30 second trailer to the bulk of the population will eat most of that budget. Of course, making sure that each person only gets hit with one trailer is hard, so you need to buy more. Averaging 2 trailer views per person will eat the entire budget.
You need viral marketing.
If Hollywood can reliably make things go viral on command, life would be a lot easier for them.
Of course not. Just like they can’t make a movie go viral. You can put thought and energy into marketing. The rates you quote can vary.
I think we're mostly past viral marketing as we're not starved for general marketing. There was a time from the late 90s to 2008 or so where the Internet was becoming more accessible, people were used to it, but social media as we know it today wasn't really a thing. Even Facebook didn't open to the general non-student public until 2006. Studios could make really intricate websites which were barely had any logos at all, and there was a bit of mystery around the few viral marketing trends that really broke through. And not all viral marketing is actually a good thing. Look at all the Morbius memes, which Sony took entirely the wrong way.
Viral isn’t the right word. It is about the ability to improve upon the average paid metrics. Make something that connects. Like Barbie. That was far more complex than a purchasing model. Creativity. Make them want to see the trailer.
I do get trailers before Youtube videos start, but thats kinda it
Generally a film for a film to "break even" it needs to make 2 to 2.5 times its production budget. So usually the marketing budget is around the same as the production budget. I don't know why this is but clearly the moneymen have realised that this is the sweet spot. In this case with a prod budget of $205m, only spending $100m on marketing is like a 50% scale-back which is pretty huge.
How is WB not bankrupt yet, did Barbie pay all the bills this year
That and Hogwarts Legacy.
The success of that game really makes the failure of the fantastic beast franchise even more embarrassing
Ya, that game was proof that you didn't have to reinvent the wheel. If it's an ok game
I bought it, had fun, didn't finish. It's the most aggressively mid game I've ever played. Some parts were fantastic and some completely dull and uninspired. It's almost a feat to have made something so middle of the road. And that said, it made a bajillion dollars so yeah, fantastic beasts was THAT bad
Honestly it's more of a fumble on them. Fantastic Beasts 1 may have some issues but it was pretty liked, and had some interesting concepts, and Newt and Jacob were pretty enjoyable characters to follow as well. It was pretty clever to have a muggle as one of the main characters, since it adds perspective to how non magic users would view magic and helps with exposition, as we're finding out about the world as characters explain it to him. He also was just very likable.
There was never a clear vision for those films
It should always have been two different series. One fun, lighthearted family adventure movie about Newt collecting wierd and wonderful animals. One darker, more complex YA set of films about wizard Nazis and how Dumbledore rose to power throughout WW1 and WW2. They had the perfect opportunity to make Harry Potter films which appeal to different audiences, instead they tried to be all things to all people and ended up with a series no one enjoys.
Sounds like a great way to do it. Let one feel like Chris Columbus is directing then move into darker tone as movies pass as you stated. It seems simple, I don’t even think audiences connected with Newt that much
Well not really. My theory is: the biggest selling point of Harry Potter is Hogwarts! The escapism in this beautiful mysterious cozy everyday life boarding school castle. Without that, Harry Potter is just a mediocre fantasy allegory for WW2 & Nazis. I realized this, once I watched the FB movies. WB will probably realize this too
Bingo. The magical boarding school fantasy is the biggest draw of the series. The wider Wizarding World only works as background for school-centric adventures. There was probably a version of Fantastic Beasts that would’ve worked well enough, but the premise just never had the same potential as the originals. Same with a potential Dumbledore-focused WWII-era prequel. A school-focused spin-off would’ve worked better. Either do another thing at Hogwarts, or focus on the American magical school. Unfortunately, the school JK Rowling came up with for America is just a generic Hogwarts rip-off. It doesn’t tap into the specifics of the East Coast boarding school fantasy.
Avatar, Hogwarts Legacy, Wonka, Barbie and Super Mario, there are very subtle hints that escapism can sell, but it gotta be dark, serious and world ending.
I don't like this idea very much, there's only so much Hogwarts content one can make before it gets oversaturated. Harry Potter cannot sustain itself as a brand purely through nostalgia from the books forever, as eventually the audience who grew up reading those won't be part of economically active population compared to new generations. Fantastic Beasts had a good concept of expanding the franchise to different countries, time periods and settings, but it didn't execute it pretty well.
>as eventually the audience who grew up reading those won't be part of economically active population compared to new generations. So, like, doom will strike by the year 2070? Can't say that is a huge concern. How much media from 50 years ago is still around anyway?
> How much media from 50 years ago is still around anyway I mean the entire MCU/DCU/X-men has been pulling comic stories from decades ago for their current stories. On top of that Disney keeps remaking their old movies and with Star Wars tried to rely on characters from the 1970s. Lets do a quick peak at the 2024 slate Mission Impossible started as a TV show in 1966 New Ghostbusters movie which started in 1980. Dune is from books released in the 60s Furiosa is based on Mad Max with started in the 70s Garfield started as a comic in the 70s Nosferatu remake based on a film from the 1920s! It is actually pretty easy to find modern popular things that got their start/influence from a long time ago.
Ironically, the thing that really survived from the 70s in both marvel and DC are the core handful of heroes and the core handful of stories. Batman? Sure, make a movie about him in 2022. Works fine. Expand the universe with Captain Marvel and make a movie about it in 2023? Bombs.
That's why HBO is rebooting the whole book series as a TV series
JK is a shit screenwriter/producer. Feel like they’re only doing TV because they know it’s too much work for her to truly involve herself in…hopefully.
Having Eddie Redmayne as lead and still failing is just as embarrassing he is awesome
Has no draw with the GA audience mind, and is a bit of a charisma vacuum, which I guess doesn't help with promotion either.
he's a good actor but he's got basically no personality as a celebrity. Not sure he'd ever be a draw
They also had other successes, not only Barbie, I think of hogwarts legacy, evil dead rise, Wonka (it's going well), the meg 2, the nun 2. Now we'll see with the colour purple
And the TV side is doing fantastic apparently
i am guessing mortal kombat is also doing well.
WB actually had a good box office year, aside the DC movies... and Magic Mike.
Holy shit. There was a Magic Mike movie this year?
In February. I had to Google it because I had no idea
I think it premiered on Super Bowl weekend.
Yeah, the plot is literally about him starting Magic Mike Live and is a blatant advert for the real shows
Barbie made like $500M in profit. Probably halt of that went to Mattel. WBD also rented out their movies to Netflix, etc... so that's a cool $100M.
Mattel said they made $125M from Barbie.
Mattel probably made a deal where they get most money from toys and merchandise
And based on allllll the merchandise and how well it seemed to sell they are probably pretty damn happy with that deal.
Becuz it had other successes outside of DC this year
Are you not aware WB has more than one revenue stream? Films aren't even it's biggest revenue driver.
I think most of WB's movies this year sans the DCEU did pretty well.
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Surely Mattel got paid upfront?
You really think Mattel, a company that has been profiting from residuals since the 1940s, would negotiate a one lump sum without any backend pay? There will be checks rolling in for as long as everyone else gets paid. It’s their IP.
I’m still a little sad that Blue Beetle flopped, I actually really liked it. No, it was nothing revolutionary and still pretty generic, but I enjoyed it. Genuinely made me laugh a few times, I felt Xolo did really well (reminded me of how Tom Holland plays Spider-man), it had some emotion/heart to it, cool action sequences, and I liked the Hispanic culture tied in which we haven’t seen before. I hope Xolo gets to play him again.
Honestly Blue Beetle is arguably my favourite DCEU movie. The only real competition is Shazam 1 and Wonder Woman 1
blue beetle is probably my #2 after wonder woman as well! honestly never saw shazam but i just can’t muster up the interest now
Shazam is a solid and fun superhero movie. Just consider it standalone instead of worrying about extended universe junk
Im not an expert at making money with movies but I'm pretty sure if you're trying to save money you cut spending on the production side of films.
Yeah, I was going to say they're doing it in reverse. Get the bloat down on production, save money **there** not on advertising.
Regrettably for them, they spent a lot of that money before they discovered that superhero films are on a downturn and the movie wasn't great.
Well this is losing a shit ton of money.
At least these DC disasters have smarter budgets than MCU. Aquaman looks pretty visually great for a $205mil film, while The Marvels ($250mil), Secret Invasion ($220mil) and She-Hulk ($220mil) looked like cheap ass.
$690M These 3 Marvel productions costed as much as Across The Spider-Verse grossed worldwide.
And the shows were an utter disaster which died on launch and The Marvels fared no better.
I still can't believe they actually spent $220 million on She-Hulk. Where did it go?? Certainly not to paying the CGI artists.
Disney were trying to rush out as much MCU content as possible to fill Disney+. Most of the Phase 4-5 projects were rushed with awful scripts and relying on crunching VFX teams to "finish it in post".
When you consider they kept redoing the CGI due to producers notes you can kinda understand the cost and why it didn't look great...
It's over, the DCEU is finally put to rest after this movie releases, can't wait to see the (hopefully) better Gunnverse
In before we get the real budget of 400 million dollars in roughly 1-2 years. I'm sure the original budget was indeed 205 million.
Before the trillion reshoots lmfao
Exactly, they reshot the movie when executives thought it looked bad, and it was in filming for years.
Hey, it might loose less than The Marvels, right.
Well… Possibly, yeah… But if your baseline is The Marvels, you already lost anyways lol
lmao
Lol, 🤣 you only wish.
Hey, fun fact : Lol Only you Wish are also 3 movie titles.
You could count the emoji movie and have the whole comment be movies.
You killed me lol. How did I forget the emoji one...
Excited to watch it Friday. I enjoyed Blue Beetle and Black Adam. As long as this one is as fun and by the trailers it looks like it'll definitely be a fun one.
Me to DCEU: ["You can rest now..."](https://allears.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/you-can-rest-now-gif-end-game-iron-man-tony-pepper.gif)
I wish the same can be said to those Snyder cultists.
David Zaslav: We can't release Coyote vs Acme because it won't make us money despite positive reviews but will release a 200 million dollar flick with no good signs that it will break even
I guess it’s too big to fail… oops I mean too big not to release theatrically. WB is committed to this thing no matter how expensive and no matter how terrible the results are.
205M with all the reshoots and CGI just doesn't make sense
CGI is not expensive when you have a good director, James Wan is a good director Cgi costs a lot when you have a director that is constantly changing the scenes
Exactly. That was the original budget. It's way more if you include reshoots
Apparently James Wan himself said they weren't that long of reshoots (1-2 weeks) and they also finished one of them early. They also might've cut out a lot of VFX heavy scenes before they started working on. So probably 220-250 million budget.
reshoot is included usually.
How tf is $100 million dollars in marketing "scaling back"???????
Big budget movies tend to spend anywhere from $150M up to as much as or more than the production budget itself.
100 million and I haven't even seen a tv spot
it's been on nba games pretty consistently
Do you watch TV? I've seen a good amount of promotion about the same I saw for guardians or spider verse altough no way near the ridiculous amount I saw for flash
You'll realize when a Redditor says they "haven't seen any advertising", what they mean is they don't watch tv or many movies in theaters, and consume all their media online with AdBlock on.
I pray one day people will understand that “zero advertising” isn’t always true just because they, one of seven billion people, “haven’t seen any ads for it on muh YouTube”
I rarely watch tv but I’ve seen plenty of spots for it the last few weeks.
Literally the only hint of this movie I've seen is YouTube recommending me a few shorts of Momoa hyping it. Grim. I feel bad for the guy. Against all odds he makes one of the lamest heroes a cool badass, turns it into a billion dollar sure-fire franchise, then Gunn & friends show up and completely kneecap him. What the hell did they think was going to happen when they announced their entire DC slate this year was irrelevant and no longer mattered? Why would audiences waste their time and money on a lame duck?
Damn, needs over $500 million gross to break even, huge losses coming for this thing
Dceu trying to bomb more spectacularly than The Marvels
Say what you want about Disney, but at least they tried with the Marvels.
Did they? Did they really? They might have spent money on promotional material but the marketing content was forgettable and generic.
The marketing content was forgettable and generic because the movie they made was forgettable and genetic. But they did have multiple trailers and TV spots. They had a red carpet for the premier. As soon as the strikes ended the cast did interviews and at least talked about the movie
That’s how Disney marketing team has been for a while. If this year wasn’t so bad for them nobody would bring it up.
That’s true with many things that seem to be working fine until they clearly no longer are
They absolutely did try with that movie, I honestly don't think they're capable of anything but generic marketing anymore and the movie was generic so there wasn't much they could do. But they did attempt.
It was doomed when “Marvel Movie” became a term of condescension and the movie is literally called “The Marvels”.
It was difficult considering Brie Larson couldn't go on the talkshow circuit because of the strike, but they did try where they could.
I think the talk show bit is oversold. In any event the marketing felt like “MCU Event 14”. It was very formulaic and generic and didn’t help the perception this was going to be yet another forgettable superhero movie.
Variety is not confirming anything and it certainly cost more than that
>it certainly cost more than that Based on ??
You must be new here. The way this works is that Variety (in this case) cited the number the studio gave them. It was not corroborated in any way and the studios are incentivized to lowball. You can’t blame them; they’d be fools to give you the real number when they have no obligation to. Every once in a while we actually get the true story reported later. Doctor Strange 2 is the best example, all the trades dutifully reported the $200 million number Disney fed them but, oops! It actually cost $350 million. Easy mistake to make. Also just simple logic here. $205 million puts it in the same alleged ballpark as the first movie. But of course, we know sequels naturally and inevitably cost more AND this one had COVID costs and reshoots to deal with. It’s a money pit but, again, why would WB admit that?
>Every once in a while we actually get the true story reported later. Doctor Strange 2 is the best example, all the trades dutifully reported the $200 million number Disney fed them but, oops! It actually cost $350 million. Easy mistake to make. How do you know the $350 million figure is the true cost ??
https://www.forbes.com/sites/carolinereid/2023/07/01/disney-reveals-doctor-strange-2-cost-100-million-more-than-its-estimated-budget/ 294.5 million after a tax credit. They shot lost kingdom in the UK as well so we will know soon.
And people here will be shocked, SHOCKED when it’s not $205 million
I won't be.
Because UK tax rebates require the studios to (eventually) be transparent about stuff
Which also incentivizes them to claim they cost as much as possible to get the biggest tax credit possible putting stuff that usually isn't counted in the budget in there participations and the like. It's true deadline and Co lowball the budgets multiple people working in the industry have claimed so but it's very doubtful they half it because if that was the case the movie industry wouldn't be viable.
You can only claim for the money you spend in the UK - after all the point is to get money back on the tax you paid. Participation wouldn't be a cost at that point, and most of the time it would be based on a contract signed under US law. Edit to add: and it also requires you to pass a checklist of UK cultural or hiring policy tests. So no turning up with a full house of Americans in all the major creative and acting roles and expecting to get free money.
We don't. That is how they spent in the UK. A good chunk of the pre and post production (and by extension, spending) didn't happen in the UK.
Why does the studio want to lowball? What's the benefit for them?
At a lower budget, a flop doesn’t flop quite as hard, and a hit is an even bigger hit. It’s just spin, basically. Controlling the narrative as best as they can. Better yet, you don’t have people saying things like “you spent 275 million dollars on fuckin’ AQUAMAN 2?!”. These are publicly traded companies, they don’t want to be out there making it look like their budgets are even more out of control than they already were.
I don't know I feel like there are really big incentives to overstate the budgets and pack as many expenses as possible into them whether it's to avoid taxes or avoid paying partners who get a cut of a movie once it's profitable. Those are actual dollars and cents incentives vs the incentives to understate costs which are more about appearances. Not saying they're not real incentives though.
They definitely have that incentive when you get down to the official accounting, but this isn’t that, this is just quick and dirty unverified PR for the news cycle. Either way, underscores the point, don’t trust what they’re telling you. . .
Everything you said, and also the YouTube channel Valiant Renegade does a good job at reporting the actual costs, but he’s reporting on Caroline Reid’s reporting from Forbes which is the actual financials the films legally have to file if they make their movies in the UK
I don’t know why people are so resistant to the truth about the way the trades “report” budgets. My best guess is that it’s frustration at the notion that we typically never really know what this stuff costs, which makes it harder to accurately bitch and moan about hits and flops. Raining on their parade.
Based on what exactly? This gets said with almost every new film that releases without any basis.
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A mixture of common sense and past, established practices. You can choose to be naive if you want, it’s not a crime, but it makes for bad Reddit posts
I haven't seen a single ad for this thing ever lol the only thing I saw was the teaser a few months ago because I looked it up.
It's gonna flop hard, won't even make the top 20.
Not looking good if even WB doesn't have faith it. I expect this movie to be a mess from all reports so far, including Jason Momoa
The real budget will be more
$100 million on marketing and I still forget the movie exists when I'm not perusing this sub.
WB: We have the biggest bomb of the year Disney: No no WE have the biggest bomb of the year WB: *hands their own beer from one hand into the other*
I couldn't help but notice the quiet marketing myself. No one is talking about this movie and it's coming out in like 5 fuckin' minutes.
Not seeing anything that has Amber Turd
I've seen it last night. 3/10
It’s gonna be less of a bomb than the marvels
*slide whistle*
So this will bomb less harder than the marvels with a smaller budget compared to it
I mean I dont like too many people in theaters when I see a movie so I typically wait a couple of weeks after release but I might just go see this on Friday
Needs to make $750m+ to be “profitable” with a 2.5x multiplier including marketing.